While everyone around the world is fighting to contain the COVID-19, there are law enforcement agencies from developed nations fighting to plant backdoors in messengers. You may have a slight idea about WhatsApp fighting for users’ privacy, by not letting authorities intercept your conversations. But, this may eventually turn around as WhatsApp still being a company, and law enforcement being the government.
End-to-end Encryption is a protocol followed by many instant messengers to safeguard their users’ conversations from being intercepted by unwanted parties. While this is desired by everyone, law enforcement agencies from the UK, US, and Australia are fighting against those app makers to set an unwarranted encryption method (like backdoors) for authorities to help them crack the online spam and abuse.
A Major Hit Coming By
In the latest move of this debate, the EARN-IT bill which is passing through the US Legislative to be approved will be the biggest weapon from Senators saying Aye! This bill is intended to stop child abuse and online illicit content from spreading and needs the originator to be traced and punished. For this to be done, there’s no way authorities can do without planting a backdoor.
WhatsApp, on the other hand, is strongly fighting along with its parent Facebook foe user rights. Electronic Frontier Foundation is also calling this bill will if passed, is a major threat for users’ privacy, and there would be no purpose of secure conversations. Senators being clever, they haven’t mentioned the term backdoors in their bill but said the platforms which let illicit content pass, will be held responsible ultimately. So, they should figure out how.
Favorable and Unfavourable Surprises
In a recent disclosing, Christopher Wray, the one who previously advocated supporting WhatsApp on the same issue while working for Kind & Spalding’s case, is now on the side of FBI fighting against WhatsApp! Further, WhatsApp has filed a case against Israel company called NSO group for allegedly hacking hundreds of its users through its spyware, is done when it’s following the end-to-end encryption method!
Further, there’s even NSA supporting WhatsApp and other messengers for being reliable platforms for conversations. Yet, there’s still a fight going on. And yes, until there’s an effective replacement for setting backdoors, or people moving completely into the dark web, there’s no way protecting the privacy of users.
